


Successive Approximation

by Goddess47



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 00:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goddess47/pseuds/Goddess47
Summary: "Extinction Level Event," Radek got in, before Rodney could start what probably would be a lecture.





	Successive Approximation

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2018 SGA Reverse Bang! Many thanks to Penumbria for her lovely artwork! [Check it out and tell her how lovely it is!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597247)
> 
> And thanks to the folk at Squee who helped me with the story!

"So, what does this mean?" John asked, frowning as he skimmed the report they had sent him. He looked up at the three scientists arrayed in front of him.

"Extinction Level Event," Radek got in, before Rodney could start what probably would be a lecture.

Rodney glared for a moment. "That's the simplistic answer," Rodney allowed. "It's more like..."

John waved a hand. "Sorry, but close enough, for now," he said. "How soon?"

"A year at the outside," Rodney admitted. "But we're pretty confident it's more than six months."

"At least it's not tomorrow, for a change," John replied that there was some -- relatively -- good news. "What do we do?" 

"Do?" Rodney repeated. "What part of _extinction_ didn't you understand?"

"I haven't read your report yet -- I need more information. What's involved? The planet? The solar system? The galaxy?" John asked.

"The solar system for sure," Radek jumped in. "It will affect the surrounding space. But primarily just this solar system."

"Can we move the city? Do we evacuate? Do we spend the last of our ZPMs on a shield?" John shot back.

"Stop being dense, it's annoying," Rodney grumbled. John didn't acknowledge Miko's quick grin, even though sometimes it was fun to wind Rodney up. But this was too serious for fooling around. "Again, what part of extinction don't you get?"

"So the shield is out," John replied, with a small grin. "Can we move the city?"

"Sadly, we are pretty sure that will not be an option," Radek put in quickly. "While the Worm Hole Drive can move the city to new locations quickly, it will require more ZedPM energy than we have right now to get off the planet."

"Should we contact Earth and see if they might give one of the ZPMs we gave to them back?" John asked.

Rodney shrugged and shook his head. "You can ask, but I think we blew through every favor anyone owes us to get back to Pegasus. I wouldn't spend too much time on it."

John reluctantly nodded. They had begged, bargained, pleaded and blackmailed everyone from the President of the United States to the head of the IOA to be able to go back to Pegasus. They had lots of supplies, thanks to Jack O'Neill pulling strings for them, but even O'Neill had warned them he couldn't do much more for them once they left Earth.

"Abandoning the city is our only option?" John asked. Both Rodney and Radek squirmed in place. He knew that look. Miko just looked amused.

"Okay, what far-fetched idea do you have this time?" John demanded.

"It's not _far-fetched_!" Rodney exclaimed.

"Yes, it is," Miko added softly.

Rodney whirled to face her.

She shrugged. "But it is also the best we have, unless there is a miracle," she admitted.

John wanted to hit his head against a brick wall. It would be more productive.

"Will _someone_ tell me what you're talking about?" John pleaded.

"Time travel." Radek dropped that bomb.

John was startled. "Like, we go back in time, fix whatever makes this sun do these freaky coronal mass ejections?"

Silence.

Miko grinned and nodded her head.

"How..." Rodney's eyes narrowed. "I _hate_ when you play stupid! Stop it!"

John stared. "You mean...."

Radek nodded. "Yes, Colonel. That's exactly what we mean."

"Okay, I'm going to get comfortable and you're going to walk me through it," John said. He grabbed a chair, sat down. "Show me."

It actually took the better part of a week before they had it explained what was going on as well as their time travel hypothesis to John's satisfaction.

John sat back in his chair. "Okay, I think we're ready to take this to Woolsey."

John had been as surprised as anyone when Richard Woolsey had decided to come back to Pegasus with them. Since this was a volunteer-only mission, it had been surprising when the man had applied to come back with them. John was glad to have someone take on all the administrative work so John wouldn't have to.

Rodney grinned. "Good thing there's a staff meeting tomorrow, then."

"I was hoping we'd be ready," John admitted. "I put us on the agenda already."

"But, we still need to..." Rodney automatically protested.

"Will be fine," Radek interrupted.

John did the introduction to the upcoming crisis, letting Rodney, Radek and Miko handle the questions. In the end, there really weren't other options, although Woolsey insisted they evacuate the city as a precaution.

"That makes sense," John admitted. "In case this doesn't work."

"I'll be glad to manage that planning," Woolsey offered. "That will keep you free to work on your time travel project."

"I'll send Lorne to you, then," John decided. "I'd like to see what we can do to save most of the supplies we have here. I'd hate to lose all of that."

"True," Woolsey replied. "But we'll take care of dealing with those details. You take care of doing what you can about making it unnecessary."

"Will do," John replied.

Rodney, Radek and Miko disappeared into the lab. Rodney delegated any emergency city repairs to a team that he watched over, but not as closely as he normally would have. Since they wanted a city to come back to, they needed to keep up the most important repairs. 

John came into the lab one morning to find Miko looking faintly smug.

"You figured something out, didn't you?" John asked, with a grin.

"I'm pretty sure I found the reference in the city's database about the original problem with the sun," she replied. "I followed the information that we had found with the last ejection, and found several other leads to other scientists that had studied the problem extensively."

"What kind of a time frame are we looking at?" John was curious.

Miko sighed. "That's the problem. Right now I found theories that the initial event was 'about' three million years ago. And that's too wide of a window to work with. That's the next step, to narrow it down to within a thousand years."

"Will we be able to work with that?" John asked.

"You'll be in a time machine," Miko pointed out. "Once you're in the neighborhood, you should be able to work with it."

"Did you figure out what we're looking for?" John asked.

"At this point, the three of us support the theory that it's a high density moon -- or something larger than a meteor -- that got thrown out of its orbit somehow. The heavy elements from the moon are what's setting off the ejections," Miko explained.

"It ate something not good for it, and it has gas?" John grinned at her.

Miko rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately, that's a reasonable analogy," she admitted.

Radek and Rodney weren't having as much luck with the actual time machine. 

"There was a, well, rumor about SG-1 having found a Jumper with a time machine in it," John offered. "I don't know what happened to the Jumper, but maybe O'Neill can give us some ideas."

Rodney's head came up quickly. " _Now_ you're telling us this?"

"Give me a break!" John protested. "I had other things to do! And it was only a rumor!"

Connecting with O'Neill took a couple of days. Once O'Neill -- admittedly reluctantly -- understood what they wanted, he insisted that Carter and Jackson also be there.

They connected via the Gate Bridge. O'Neill, Carter and Jackson were huddled around a camera in what John guessed was Jackson's office. John had arranged to use Woolsey's conference room for their end of the conference.

"We really don't know what happened to the Jumper," Sam said. "If we really did go through time, which there is evidence of..."

"Carter. Theoretical evidence!" O'Neill leaned in to say.

Sam rolled her eyes. " _Theoretical_ evidence of a Jumper with time travel capabilities, it was most likely something from ..."

Rodney held up a hand. "No! Don't tell me!"

"Janus." Sam and Daniel said together.

"Shoot me now!" Rodney moaned. Radek muttered in Czech as he rubbed a hand over his forehead.

Sam went on. "Even though we recovered the tape from... wherever." She waved a hand at O'Neill before he could say anything. "We never did find any physical evidence of a Jumper or any device that aided in the _theoretical_ time travel."

"Damn," Rodney said with feeling.

"But, in the end, it probably was a Jumper," Sam shrugged. "There's no other good way to account for the physical location of the artifacts."

"And there are drawings from that time period that can be interpreted as a Jumper," Daniel added. "Very stylized drawings, and you have to know what you're looking for, but a Jumper is a legitimate interpretation."

"Anything else?" Rodney asked.

Carter shrugged. "Not really," she admitted. "We spent a lot of time trying to figure this out ourselves and never did come to a reasonable conclusion."

"Thanks," Rodney replied. "I think."

Carter laughed. "Let me know if you need some help."

"I may have to take you up on that," Rodney answered.

Rodney went back into the lab with Radek and Miko to follow the few clues they had.

It took another month before they had something almost-concrete to work with. There were incomplete clues in the database that led them to suspect there was yet another hidden lab.

"What is it with this guy?" Rodney complained. "He couldn't just have a lab that we could actually find?"

"Hey!" John chided. "Be glad it's still here and not in one of the towers we've lost already!"

"Details," Rodney waved a hand.

"Important details," John shot back.

It took them another week to actually get into the lab. It took John's ATA gene -- Rodney was annoyed that it wouldn't react to his -- and use of a Naquadah generator to repower the entire tower before they could get in.

"Well, he could have left an already built Jumper for us," John complained as he looked around the disheveled lab. 

"Good luck with that!" Rodney answered absently. He was digging into the new data files they had found that, thankfully, had what seemed to be a reasonable portion of the information they needed.

"What can I do?" John asked.

"Coffee!" Rodney said without looking up from his terminal. "Lots of it!"

John grinned. He should have known. "I'll get on it!"

It took gallons of coffee and close to two weeks to have an something resembling a digital prototype. Even Rodney frowned at the latest simulation.

"Well?" John asked.

"I don't know..." Rodney said slowly. "It's more than improbable."

"The improbable we do, the impossible just takes a little longer," John quoted.

Rodney grinned at him before frowning again. "This is... bigger than anything we've had to do before." His voice sounded uncertain.

Disconcerted by an uncertain Rodney, John threw an arm around his shoulders and drew him in. 

"If anyone can do it, you can," John said firmly. "Worse case, we abandon the city and start somewhere else."

Rodney took a deep breath. "And that's a last resort," he replied. "Okay, moment of crisis over." He leaned into John for a moment. "Thanks."

The first physical prototype melted a hole in the floor of the lab -- actually through two floors -- before it exploded. It had been a good thing they had put all the lab safety protocols into place, so no one was hurt. The secondary lab they were using was a total loss, but it had sent Rodney, Radek and Miko right back to work with the new data they had from that experiment.

"Rodney, are we running out of time?" John finally had to ask. It had been six months since that first meeting and there was a growing air of desperation in the labs.

Rodney looked up from the computer screen he had been peering into. He rubbed a hand over his face and sat back wearily in his chair.

"I don't know," he admitted. 

"I hate to do this, but I'm going to tell Woolsey to go ahead with the evacuation," John said softly. "Right now, that needs to be Plan A." As Rodney opened his mouth to protest, John went on, "You can keep working on this, but I reserve the right to pull the plug when it becomes too late."

Rodney sighed. "I hate to agree with you," he replied. "But that's reasonable. I don't want to lose anyone if we can help it."

John grinned. "Okay, time for a night off," he said, pulling Rodney to his feet. "I've got some beer and chips, we can go out on the pier for a while."

Rodney pointed a finger at John. "I knew it! You've been holding out on me!"

"Saved it for a special occasion!" John retorted. 

It wasn't long before they were down to a skeleton crew on Atlantis. A contingent of Marines rotated through as security for the city... John was never going to allow a repeat of the Kolya debacle. A second set of Marines were removing anything portable that might be of use, with the highest priority on some of the supplies, especially food, medications and electronics, they had from Earth that wouldn't be easily replaced in Pegasus.

Rodney, Radek and Miko worked endlessly on the time machine. John made them take breaks for food and to sleep, while letting them rant at him to let off steam. 

Closing on nine months after the initial meeting, Rodney finally admitted, "I don't know if we can do this." He slumped in his chair, tired and drawn.

"Any idea how much longer there is?" John asked.

"We've been keeping an eye on the sun and it's starting to show a slight increase in flares, so that means sooner than later," Rodney said. "We're running out of time."

"Do we give up?" John persisted.

"I think we have another month," Rodney said. "We'll give it two weeks and see where we are."

"Is that enough of a safety margin?" John said.

Rodney shrugged. "It's as good as we have at the moment," he answered. "The minute we see any increase in flares, we'll evacuate."

"No waiting to the very last minute?" 

"No, I won't!" He saw John's doubtful look. "Promise!" Rodney gave a wry grin.

"Okay," John reluctantly agreed. 

Of course, at the point John was ready to call it all off, they made a breakthrough. 

"We actually have the parts," Rodney said over his shoulder as John followed him into a yet another disorganized lab. "We have to assemble them together." He rooted through a box. "Oh, and we probably have to find a couple."

"How long with this take?" John demanded. "We're running out of time!"

"I know that!" Rodney huffed. "But... we have a chance!"

"Tell me what to do," John demanded.

John suspected there was duct tape involved by the time Rodney declared the time device complete. Some of the parts they needed were dubious, a couple wouldn't initialize and they made do with other parts, but it didn't blow up and the simulations were right on target.

"Now what?" John asked, as the machine in the Jumper hummed slightly.

"We go back in time?" Rodney said.

"Are you asking or telling me?" John demanded.

"Telling!" Rodney shot back.

John turned to Radek and Miko. "Not that I don't trust Rodney's judgment, but, well... What do you think?"

Radek shrugged. "It's as good as it's going to get," he replied. "And it's the best chance we have to save the city with the time we have left."

John looked at Miko. 

"I think... No, I know it's our only hope," she said softly. "Go for it."

"Okay, then," John decided. He keyed his radio. "Matias?"

"Sir?"

"Prepare for final evacuation," John ordered. "Dr. McKay and I will be going out on the Jumper, but everyone else needs to leave. One hour."

"Yes, sir!"

After the last group was through the Stargate, Rodney raised the shield and removed the dialing crystal to ensure that no one could come through. If they weren't successful in their mission, it didn't matter, since the planet would be gone. If they were successful, they'd bring the crystal back and welcome the Expedition back to the city.

John and Rodney climbed into the Jumper and left the city through the exit in the roof. John circled the city once, for a last look, climbed into space and moved away from the orbit of the planet. Rodney had assured him there were -- some -- safety protocols in place that should ensure they wouldn't appear inside the planet. John was just being careful.

"Now," Rodney directed. "I need you to think _three million years ago_ at it."

"That's it?" John was incredulous.

Rodney shrugged. "We didn't have time for anything fancy."

John shook his head. "Here goes nothing," he said.

For some reason John closed his eyes. He put his hands on the dash of the Jumper and thought carefully about _three million years ago_.

There was a long moment of darkness and disorientation. 

"Whoa!" Rodney muttered. "Head rush!"

John opened his eyes and shook his head slightly to get the fuzziness out. "Did it work?" The planet that had been nearby was gone and they were floating alone in space. 

"Checking!" Rodney called back. "Give me a minute!"

John took a deep breath and settled in to wait.

"Okay, looks like we're about where we should be," Rodney reported after tapping on his tablet for several minutes. "The pattern of the stars has changed appropriately from where they were in our time."

"What do we do next?" John asked. He had gone over the basics of the plan with Radek, but needed to keep Rodney focused on the task at hand. It also kept his mind from thinking too hard about what they were doing. And what would happen if they failed.

"We move closer to the sun," Rodney replied. "We need to see if the event has happened already or not."

"Roger that," John answered, setting a course toward the sun.

It took several hours of travel to get to a location Rodney deemed appropriate. 

"This is close enough to do the tests that I need, but not expose us to too much heat and radiation," Rodney declared. 

"So. How close to the event are we?" John asked.

Rodney looked up from his tablet. "It's already happened, so we're going to have to go back further in time."

"How far do you think?" John asked.

"There's an anomaly on the sun that looks... recent isn't quite the right word, but it will work," Rodney answered. "I'd like to go back another twenty thousand years at this point to see what we can see."

"Twenty thousand years coming up!" John replied. He put his hands on the dash and thought the number clearly at the device. The disorientation was shorter this time.

"We're here," John announce. "I guess."

"You guess?" Rodney demanded.

"Hey! It's not like there was much of an instruction manual to go with this thing!" John shot back. 

""Yeah, yeah, yeah," Rodney waved a dismissive hand in John's direction. He looked up from his tablet, "Looks right!"

"Good!" John grinned.

Rodney poked at his tablet for a few minutes, then sighed. "That anomaly is still there, so we have to go back a bit further."

"Another ten thousand years?" John asked.

"As good as anything," Rodney answered. 

The same short disorientation and Rodney's attention was immediately on his tablet.

They took three more -- relatively -- short jumps back in time before John called for a break.

"If nothing else, you need to have something to eat," John pointed out as Rodney protested. "And we have all the time in the world to do this. We don't need to exhaust ourselves to get this done in the first five minutes."

Rodney sighed. "You're right," he admitted. "What is there to eat?"

John laughed.

They had packed the Jumper with provisions so they could theoretically stay in space for up to six months without having to re-supply. But that would push the water to the limit and Miko couldn't promise that the CO2 scrubbers would keep working efficiently that long.

Both Radek and Miko had recommended a good long planet-side break after about three months. 

"If you out there for three months, you should do at least a week on a planet," Radek reported. "Two weeks planet side would be even better. That will give you a chance to find fresh water and we've hooked up a system to pull fresh air into the reserve tanks when you're on a planet with anything close to a breathable atmosphere."

"You know you'll need a break if it take that long, and it probably will," Miko agreed. "Move around, get some exercise. In fact, if you're in space more than a month straight, you'll want to get out of the Jumper for at least a day."

"And the fact that your time machine thing takes up most of the rear compartment, there's no real good place to sleep," John added. "Taking out the benches means sleeping on the floor and that will get old, fast."

"And Rodney will not have his special mattress," Radek grinned.

"Damn! I'm going to have to listen to him complain endlessly about his back!" John moaned. 

"Lucky you!" Radek grinned.

John got out of the pilot seat, glad to stretch for a bit. He grabbed the sandwiches that were the most perishable to eat first. They had used up the last of the fresh food on Atlantis to stock the jumper. There would be reasonably fresh food for about a week, then they'd be eating MREs. It was a good thing Rodney actually liked MREs.

John handed Rodney a sandwich and some water. "Here," he said. "Take a break. Stand up, at least."

Rodney put his tablet on the dash in front of him. "Good idea."

After cleaning up after themselves, John asked, "What next?"

"That anomaly is still there, so let's try a bigger jump this time," Rodney decided. 

"Okay, what were you thinking?" John asked.

"Let's try twenty five thousand years this time," Rodney answered.

"You got it." John put his hands on the dash. The disorientation was longer this time.

"Not sure I'm going to get used to that," John commented as he shook his head to clear it. 

"The bigger jumps are the hardest," Rodney commented as he tapped away at his tablet. "Those smaller jumps weren't as bad."

"True," John agreed.

"Huh."

"What?" John asked.

"Okay, it looks like we're finally too far back," Rodney said tapping quickly on the tablet. "The anomaly is gone and the sun seems to be stabler than it was before."

"That's good, isn't it?" John asked.

"Yes. Well, I think." Rodney frowned.

"You _think_?" John demanded.

Rodney looked up from his tablet. "I need more data, but now that I have more data, I'm theorizing there's more than one event that caused the problems with this sun."

"How many more than one?" John asked.

Rodney shrugged. "More than two, probably less than a dozen," he said.

"What's it going to take to narrow that down?" John asked.

"Time, nothing but time," Rodney sighed.

"Well. we got plenty of that!" John replied.

"Har-dee-har-har!" Rodney groaned.

John made Rodney stop after about twelve hours to get some sleep. Once Rodney relaxed enough to fall asleep, John rigged an alarm on the console of the Jumper to let him know if any of the indicators changed at all. He lay down next to Rodney, snuggled in and let himself sleep.

That set the pattern for the first week. Rodney spent time studying the sun to try to determine how many events they were looking for. John would make sure Rodney moved around, ate, and slept at 'night'. 

"I'm pretty sure there are eleven events we have to look for," Rodney finally decided.

"Do you know if they are independent or grouped?" John asked.

Rodney shrugged. "At this point, I don't know enough to be able to answer that. I'm guessing that there is at least one grouping, but until we find at least one of the actual events, I won't know."

"Fair enough," John replied. "Where to now?"

"Let's go back another twenty thousand years," Rodney decided.

"Coming right up!" John said.

It took three more jumps before Rodney decided they defintely arrived before the any of the anomalies occurred. 

"Okay, now go forward ten thousand years," Rodney directed. "And we'll go from there."

"Forward and back in half steps," John agreed. "Successive approximations."

After ten days, John decided they needed a break. Rodney sighed, rubbing his forehead, and reluctantly agreed. 

They hovered above a large beach for two hours, to see if there was any large wildlife or other possible dangers they should be aware of. Rodney analyzed the atmosphere and declared it acceptable. 

John set them down above the high tide marks, turned on the shield and opened the back door.

They stepped out on the planet into the sunshine and took a deep breath. 

"Okay, this was a good idea," Rodney admitted. 

"Even if we sleep in the Jumper, some time to catch up on some more solid sleep will be good," John agreed.

They ended up spending three days on the planet. They found a spring that provided fresh water a short distance from the shore, and there were numerous 'birds' that John shot down with a stunner. John cleaned the birds and roasted them over an open fire. Fresh food was especially tasty after even a few days of MREs.

They buried their trash and left a small marker so they could hopefully find the same location for their next break.

Back in space, they set out to find one of the anomalies actually happening. They jumped back and forth in time, in smaller jumps, circling about the actual occurence of the event. 

With Radek and MIko's recommendations to take regular breaks, John quickly decided their initial recommendation of a longer break once a month was nowhere near enough. As a result, every ten days or so, John would declare they were going to take a break, homing in on the same area of the planet. A couple of time, bad weather forced them to find another location but they spent a lot of time on 'their' beach. They'd also take time every ten to twelve weeks to do some maintenance of the Jumper, cleaning out debris and dealing with any problems that cropped up.

It took close to six months before they finally found one of the anomalies. It was, as Rodney had suspected, a super-dense meteor that had fallen into the sun. They used the weapons on the Jumper to break the rock into smaller pieces, most of which would burn up before they got to the sun. The few pieces that would actually fall into the sun would be small enough to not cause major problems.

It was slow and tedious, finding the other events. The leaping back and forth in time to find the actual events took the longest. 

In all, it was almost four years of elapsed time to find all the events. Almost all were heavy metal meteors, but there was one non-natural event.

"It's more than kinda creepy looking," John said as he peered through the windshield of the Jumper. "And we know the Wraith."

"I don't see any life signs, but I don't know if we have enough ordnance to break it up before it hits the sun," Rodney said. "But, you're right, it's creepy."

The ship -- if that was what it was -- was dark but oddly shaped for something found in space. There were odd protrusions at irregular intervals and the hull didn't look to be metallic -- or at least not a metal they could easily identify.

"We didn't pack space suits, anyway," John replied. "Maybe we can get closer with the Jumper and do enough damage to finish it off?"

"As long as you don't do anything too stupid," Rodney said.

"Agreed," John said.

John flew around the hulk -- it was larger than anything he'd seen before -- and found an open bay as well as a couple of gashes in the hull. He put a few blasts into each location and must have done something right, or got lucky, when the ship imploded on itself.

Rodney insisted they spend another month monitoring the sun before he'd declare their work done. They jumped forward in time in larger increments, taking the time after each jump to survey the sun at each stop.

"Ready to go home?" John asked.

"I think so!" Rodney grinned.

John put his hands on the dash and thought _home_.

Another large disorientation and they came out above the planet. 

Rodney looked at his tablet and was about to speak when a voice came over their communicator.

"Unknown ship, this is Atlantis Prime Command," a calm voice said. "Please identify yourself."

John turned to Rodney, who looked as surprised as he felt. "Atlantis Prime Command?"


End file.
